Living life…

It’s been an anxiety-making day today. Lots of deadlines loom: Article submission for a newsletter, midterm (admittedly, open book) in a class, and I’m once again behind on both readings and housework. Argh. I feel myself ramping up to hyper-efficient mode (hence blog-writing when I can’t do anything but access wordpad at work). That works – up until additional demands are asked of me. You know, like human contact.

In some ways, it’s ironic that my Gmail tagline has been “Make your lifestyle fit your life”. But we are fascinated by those things that are alien and unfamiliar. “Do it once or do it everyday,” Warhol said (h/t BoingBoing), and he had a valid observation. Maybe not a great recommendation for living, but a valid observation.

There’s also a point where one’s lifestyle isn’t just made up of yourself. And that can be problematic. When you’ve taken all you can at work – and are given more. When you’re studying all you can manage – and get an unexpected text or assignment added on. And let’s not even *talk* about living with other people! If I could magically get children to do what I wanted…

… well, I’d fake an English accent and get my own damn TV show.

I think that’s really the biggest downside of our Age. There has always been more than any one person could possibly “do” or “learn”. Now it’s painfully obvious that’s so. Before, you could at least pretend you were doing as much as possible, but now… we don’t have a lot of social coping skills that aren’t all-or-nothing, isolation or complete information overload.

Pointers to exceptions to the above are more than welcome.